When the whole story of Wolfowitz and his girlfriend came up he said he had run it by the powers that be and no one objected.

Even if that’s true, and I have no reason to believe it isn’t, he let down the president he serves by not resigning immediately and waiting until he could get a monetary deal to leave.

Now Mr. Wolfowitz has has made his deal to leave by June 30 and who knows how much the pie had to be sweetened to get him out of there?

President Bush is loyal to a fault and Wolfowitz and others have taken advantage of that loyalty. The problem is they don’t show that loyalty to the president in return.

Look at Gonzales. If he had any loyalty to the president he would have resigned instead of making up more and more stories about the US Attorney firings, dripping pieces of information like a leaky water faucet at each hearing.

There’s no crime in firing the US Attorneys for any reason, but Gonzales wouldn’t come out and tell the whole truth at one time, but instead stonewalled, and has made this story have legs when it never should have.

He has also not served the president well by pushing for prosecutions of border patrol agents doing their jobs instead of prosecuting the law-breakers.

President Bush kept George Tenet in as CIA chief as a holdover from the Clinton Administration. Tenet, by his own admission, had more access to President Bush than he ever had with President Clinton, but as soon as he left he started turning the knife in the back of the president. The knife he had obviously already used to stab him.

He won the Presidential Medal of Freedom and gladly accepted it, while he now goes around trying to discredit everything to make it look as though the president were just itching to go to war with Iraq and used Tenet as the excuse.

Loyalty is our president’s biggest problem. He’s loyal to a fault, but those who work for him are looking for ways to disparage him and make a few dollars while they’re at it.

Good riddence to Mr. Wolfowitz, and hopefully the president will tell Mr. Gonzales good-bye too. He’s an embarrassment.

Please welcome “Guss” to our blogging team.

He says he will most likely not write about politics and will most likely write only occasionally. That’s until he gets the blogging bug.

Welcome to the team, Guss.

Despite his disappointment, Prince Harry of Great Britain, will not be joining his unit when they deploy to Iraq.

I admire him for wanting to be a regular guy, but he’s not a regular guy and would be a great catch for any of the various insurgencies in Iraq.

I always thought it was not smart to send him over there as not only his life, but the lives of those who serve with him, would be at high risk.

Fortunately, General Sir Richard Dannatt, Head of the Army has said his presence in Iraq would expose the 22-year-old Prince as well as the troops serving with him to “a degree of risk that I now deem unacceptable”.

Good decision, General. Many lives will be safer for your decision.

We read this disturbing report in the Jerusalem Post today:

A Palestinian from the Gaza Strip who works for the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders has been arrested for allegedly plotting to assassinate Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) revealed Thursday.

Mazab Bashir, 25, from Deir el-Balah began working with Doctors Without Borders five years ago.

On April 19, he confessed during a Shin Bet interrogation that for months, he had been collecting intelligence on senior Israeli officials - including Olmert and a number of Knesset members.

Bashir met with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in September 2006, and said that the assassination was meant to avenge the deaths of Palestinian civilians.

Bashir also underwent arms training with the PFLP, and was picked to carry out the planned assassination.

He told the Shin Bet that he had collected information on the Internet to use to target MKs, but then realized that the MKs in question did not live in Jerusalem, the only Israeli city to which his permit granted him access.

According to the officials, after the doctor realized that the security surrounding Olmert was impenetrable, Bashir decided in December 2006 to kill David Be’eri, head of the Elad organization, a group involved in purchasing Arab homes in Jerusalem’s Old City.

That same month, he underwent combat training in the Gaza Strip in order to learn to kill without using weapons.

In January 2007, Bashir again entered Israel again on behalf of Doctors Without Borders, and began collecting information on Be’eri. He made additional trips to Jerusalem in February and March, and on April 18. He was arrested on April 19.

During his interrogation, Bashir said he had planned to return to Gaza to complete his combat training and learn, among other things, how to break necks. He said he intended to use his skills to kill Be’eri.

How very compassionate of him.

Sandy Berger, President Clinton’s National Security Adviser, who was caught stuffing documents from the National Archives, in his socks, pants and who knows where else, is voluntarily giving up his law license he hasn’t used in 15 years and doesn’t intend to use again.

The reason? If he had to go before the Board on Bar Counsel he would have risked having to tell more than he did when he got his slap on the wrist punishment for the crime he committed.

You can’t call him stupid. That’s a pretty smart move and if Hillary gets in office he can count on a job and probably even get his security clearance back. Won’t that be wonderful.

I found this in an antique shop just when I needed it most. If your loved one is a male instead of a female just substitute he for she. It works both ways.

For about five years after my beloved grandmother died I couldn’t speak of it without crying so hard no one could understand what I was saying.

I went to a psychiatrist, realizing something was wrong, and I needed help.

During the course of the therapy he told me to write a letter to myself saying what my grandmother would say to me to help me get out of that awful tailspin I was in.

I didn’t want to do it but my wonderful brother L T encouraged me to do it as he said it would help.

I wrote that letter and I could barely see the words I was writing through the tears in my eyes, but it worked for me just as the psychiatrist had said it would, and it was later that he told me he didn’t know what else he could have done for me at the time. He had tried everything.

As I read Kay’s comment today about the loss of her son and as I know of so many others in my life who have lost children I thought of this.

When you’re ready try it. It worked for me and it might work for you.

As I was growing up I remember reading Bible stories from the Bible and discussing them in Sunday School or Bible School, but I don’t ever remember reading of gore in there at a young age.

Yes, I read about the parting of the Red Sea and the Pharaoh and his army all being drowned, along with their horses. Yes I read about the walls of Jericho tumbling down but I never thought of it at the time as having a big death toll.

I read of Noah’s Ark and knew all but 8 people and pairs of animals perished. I read about Isaac taking his only son Jacob up to the mountains, gathering wood and getting ready to slay him on God’s command until the angel of God stopped him.

I read all those stories and more. I read of the Crucifixion of Jesus, the Only Begotten Son of the Only God. It did not make me happy, but no one went into deep detail as to what happened and it was only until I saw Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” that I fully realized the suffering our Lord did for me and for you.

I was never traumatized by it and I’ll wager I was just as normal a kid as any other and my teaching was just as normal as the teachings of today are.

That’s why this story is so disturbing to me.

The Good Book isn’t clean enough for Hong Kong.

At least 838 complaints had been registered Wednesday with the city’s Television and Entertainment Licensing authority after an anonymous Web site, truthbible.net, said the Bible “made one tremble” with its sexual and violent content, including rape and incest, the news agency reports.

[...]
If the Bible is labeled indecent in Hong Kong, people over the age of 18 will be the only ones able to purchase the book, and it would have to be sold with a warning label wrapped around the book.

The Web site truthbible.net already includes an English-language warning: “Legal Disclaimer Warning: This Web site contains Bible material which may offend and may not be distributed, circulated, sold, hired, given, lent, shown, played or projected to a person under the age of 18 years.”

[...]
“If there is rape mentioned in the Bible, it doesn’t mean it encourages those activities,” Reuters quoted Reverend Wu Chi-wai, Protestant minister, as saying. “It’s just common sense … I don’t think that criticism will have strong support from the public.”

Those things are in the Bible for a purpose, and that purpose is to show us how not to live in some instances and how to live in others.

That peaceful Islamic religion has issued a warning to Christians on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan to convert to Islam by yesterday or be bombed.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Christians in a Pakistani town beset by pro-Taliban militants sought government protection Wednesday, the eve of a deadline for them to convert to Islam or face violence.

About 500 Pakistani Christians in Charsadda, a town in the North West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan, received letters earlier this month telling them to close their churches and convert by Thursday or be the target of “bomb explosions.”

Several Christians, a tiny minority in the predominantly Muslim country, have fled town and others are living in fear, community leaders said.

Some complained that police were not taking the threat seriously.

“Police say someone is joking with us by writing these letters,” Chaudhry Salim, a Charsadda Christian leader, said during a news conference in Islamabad. “They have deployed only two policemen at our churches … this is the kind of security we are getting now.”

Christians everywhere need to unite in prayer for our Christian brothers and sisters who are in danger of losing their lives. But if it is God’s will that they die may they be strong in their faith and ushered into Heaven by the angels.

A staunch ally of the United States and the President is visiting Washington for the final time in his official capacity.

Prime Minister Blair who was willing to sacrifice his political career to remain true to himself and his beliefs has my gratitude and admiration.

When so many other leaders throughout the world were snickering and turning their back on our President, this man stood tall. While controversy at home swirled around him, he maintained his composure and backbone and remained our greatest ally.

Though Blair continues to praise his relationship with Bush, the friendship has played a big part in his downfall.

In an interview with NBC News on Tuesday, Blair said he got used to a “very intense” level of criticism over Britain’s participation in the Iraq war, and he praised Bush’s leadership.

“I have found him immensely straightforward to deal with, someone who is always true to his word, and someone who is a very strong leader,” Blair said.

Thank you Mr. Prime Minister for your friendship, your courage and your kind words describing President Bush. You will be missed.

It is refreshing to read of compromise in the United States Senate. Now if we can keep the extreme factions of both parties from going over a cliff ,we might see some real movement on a bill addressing Illegal Immigration.

From heading right :

Senators negotiating a bipartisan immigration reform bill have settled on the details of a plan that would immediately grant legal status to all illegal immigrants currently in the United States.

The deal on “Z visas” for illegal immigrants is one of several issues where Democrats and Republicans have reached broad agreement. …

The plan to award legal status to all illegal immigrants who meet certain qualifications would occur only after other “triggers” are met. These triggers would require that certain border security and work-site enforcement measures be in place before other aspects of the overhaul go forward.

The Z visa plan would start with the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States going on a probationary legal status. If the triggers are met — a process that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) estimated would take 18 months — then illegal immigrants who qualify could get Z visas. Those who have committed felonies would not be eligible, Graham said, and all participants would have to pass security checks, pay a fine and a processing fee and pass an English proficiency test.

Z visa holders would be able to apply for legal permanent resident status, a step toward citizenship. But at some point, the heads of households with Z visas would have to return to his or her home country and then reenter the United States. They would have to take their Z visa to the U.S. Embassy or consulate and would be guaranteed reentry. The Z visa would include a photo and fingerprints, Graham said.

I am certain skeptics will come out with all of their objections to which they are entitled, but for the moment it is gratifying to think our elected officials are working diligently toward a resolution of an extremely complex issue.

Read the whole piece at heading right to get Ed Morrissey’s take on this compromise. It is written with a great deal of common sense and of course, his usual flair.